by While I’ve generally tried to avoid getting caught up in the current hysteria, I’ve seen a few “why aren’t futurists doing more?” questions. I think it raises an interesting question for us.
I think we futurists indeed have been talking about the possibility of global pandemics for quite some time. One might say “we took the horses to water, but they didn’t drink.” Personally, I’ve included that possibility in works throughout my career. I went back and checked our 1995 book on 2025 and indeed the possibility of pandemics is in there.
What intrigued me is that perhaps we’ve talked about it so much that we got a little desensitized to it? Okay, my blog, my responsibility — I would say that it’s probably true for me. Along the lines of getting almost tired of writing about. Did I/do we lose passion in talking about this possibility, because we talked about it so often over the years? It made me wonder if there are other future possibilities that we’ve become desensitized to?
This desensitization seems possible for any “wildcard.” There is whole list of wildcards, such as pandemics, that are always possible. Practically speaking, in project work, do we include an Appendix that reminds clients of these possibilities? But then, we might be just desensitizing the clients. Who really needs to be aware of the wildcards – just those directly involved? Everyone? Somewhere in between?
It may be that we futurists ought to have a discussion on how to improve our communication of wildcard possibilities? Sounds like a good topic for a Gathering topic, doncha think? — Andy Hines
You raise an interesting point Andy. Having learned foresight discipline from the best (you of course:-)), I have always tried to encourage clients to spend time thinking about the topics at the edges of the “cone of plausibility” – both the worst and best case possible futures. The have mostly been dismissed by clients who have generally opted for the “safer” path of predictability towards the centre with maybe a bit of variation as determined by their risk appetite.
Even for a “mundane” topic such as “The Future Of Work”, very few have ever been willing to envision a possible scenario where 100% of employees are forced to work remotely ……… and yet here we are!
I think clients will now pay far more attention to the disaster scenarios in the future – but maybe only while the impact of the current situation is fresh in their minds ……….. after a while the memory will fade and they will revert back to their old ways.
We certainly do need to think deeply how to strike a balance that mitigates against future desensitisation – I am confident that if anyone is going to come up with a better way of doing that ……… it’s probably you 🙂
ha, well we will think about it. Interestingly, we are doing some research on monitoring/indicators for emerging issues ….so maybe we can add the “wildcards” to that. BTW, I have some issues with the concept of wildcards, but figured now is the not the time to quibble about that.
Thanks for this post!
I am relatively new to Foresight and Futurist thinking. We are trying to bring this kind of thinking to our community, the greater Green Bay area. It is always difficult to identify when an event like this might happen. Given a variety of trends we can perhaps see that the probability of such an event has increased in recent years. What I also wonder about is what are the long term implications of an event like this. How will the COVID19 event change or impact our lives moving forward? Your thoughts?
There are some futurists doing that now. I’m going to steer clear of that piece as the ground seems to be covered. How we handle wildcards moving forward is something where we might be able to add some value (but it will probably take a while).
I’m not sure it’s an issue of “desensitisation” (though that may be a factor) so much as what’s more or less salient in a given context social context. In the 2000s pandemics and the like were highly prominent with SARS (a virus with a very high mortality rate) and then the H1N1 flu pandemic, perhaps resulting in more attention being placed on related future scenarios/possibilities (like in the 2008 Nation Intelligence Council report that people are pointing to), but in the 2010s other issues became more and more prominent and the pandemic/infectious threat received les and less attention.
Related to this, perhaps it’s more a case of needing to have organisations and/or structures that keep issues and related risks on-the-table – outside of those social contexts where an threat or issue is being prominently considered – so there’s continual preparedness?
As I mentioned in my reply to Andrew above, we are looking at monitoring/indicators anyway, so maybe we can add in the wildcard concept. My top-of-mind thought is that there is a niche for organizational futurists to scan and monitor on an ongoing basis, and they would be the ideal candidates for this role. Very hard for part-timers to keep up with everything.
I’m not sure it’s just a niche for organisational futurists, though maybe they can help. Think of how the Trump Administration disbanded (in 2018) the National Security Council unit focused on pandemic preparedness. Critics of the Trump Administration argue that this impaired consideration of global health security threats and perhaps also their response to COVID-19. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. But if such a unit is continually funded and operational then there are specific people whose sole job is to actively monitor the issue, track emerging/potential risks, etc etc.
For more on this theme, see this article: ‘U.S. axed CDC expert job in China months before virus outbreak’ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-cdc-exclusiv-idUSKBN21910S